Congrats on the 1000 mile blast. This seems to be the case of every road trip or bike trip. You take your time getting there and have all of the fun and then it's a race to get home along the most direct and least entertaining route. It makes reaching the halfway point of a trip seem more like the end. The ride home is just an evil necessary; a commute.

See, right there is what separates guys like Antihero from us mere mortals.
If I had a woman put me up for the night, and I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to that.......I would have a hard time choosing between going back inside to a warm bed & throwing a leg over that cold wet bike knowing I wouldn't be stopping for another 17 hours! :huh

I had a particular time in mind I wanted to beat. I fired up MotionX GPS on my iPhone when I started out (good thing, too, because I forgot to reset my Trip2 odo until I was on the freeway):

Once on the road, however, I quickly realized that the Texas freeways I would be taking were anything but superhighways. Lots of 35mph zones heading out of Austin, a plethora of patrol cars, a stop at the ATM machine and a chocolate hostage that cried for release resulted in a 46mph avg during the first 63 miles.

Here's the progress via MotionX:

Progress on iPhone:

Ah yes--here's how I charge up when my phone has died out on the road and it's what I plugged my iPhone into while running GPS all day:

About the fifth or sixth town I saw that looked like this I began to regret my decision to just blaze through this jaundiced section of the world:

Made it to Tucson and met up with my sis and her family. She has two cats (one of which is some feral bobcat, cantankerous monstrosity) not in the pic who spit on me with this hissing-from-hell sound. Though I was COMPLETELY out of it (920 miles to Tucson It think it was) the shot of adrenaline I got from the damn creature almost resulted in an involuntary steel-toed boot to the whiskers.)

No sense in bluing out the max speed. We've seen your brother's posts showing that.

Click to expand...

All top speeds were done on private roads outside of Police jurisdiction. :) Only bluing out because I'm not trying to encourage or boast about what sometimes may happen on an open stretch of deserted road with no cars around.

And thanks, guys--now we all know it IS possible to do an Ironbutt on something as recalcitrant as a Ducati.

Great job once again!
The pictures are great, as always, and like you stated, those little towns like that are what I like about traveling.
I was planning to shoot across Texas when I finally do my trip, but it looks like I will be doing a slow crawl to see it all.

Once your trip is over, I hope you stay around here. Hopefully you can guide some of us sportbike riders, on the subject of long distance crotch rocket travels! lol

I just found this thread three days ago, about the time that it has taken me to get to this final post. Go figure, because I JUST missed you (I live in Fort Worth). Wow, coincidence.

Your going to have to show me around though, I'm moving up to San Francisco over the summer (going there for new years actually) and own a new 796 myself - first Ducati ever and i'm LOVING it (saying 'ever' is not much I admit, i'm only 23).

I actually sort of see an older me in you, we are physically alike and also work from a computer in the digital industry. I know your almost done with the journey but this is something! Somehow, I now feel my two week Continental Divide ride this past summer was crap compared to this, might have to one up it here in the next couple of years I guess.

PS really enjoyed the whole 'fuck it' posts, being young everyone around me is starting to be just as you describe- having many, many, many excuses for nearly everything. And then of course, I seem to get 'lucky' because I am able to afford an R32, the new M769, and now have my own business... guess the harder you work the 'luckier' you get huh